For What It’s Worth: Pony up

By Joel Dresang

Successful investors put a lot into growing their wealth. In addition to their savings, they contribute knowledge and time – and with time, patience. Investors also pony up fees.

Fees may be assessed for owning, buying or selling an investment as well as for investment advice or help from an investment professional. And fees matter.

“These fees may seem small, but over time they can have a major impact on your investment portfolio,” the Securities and Exchange Commission explains at Investor.gov. “Understanding the fees you pay is important to investing wisely.”

Less important, but still peripherally interesting, is the expression “pony up.”

It has nothing to do with little horses, the wordsmiths at Merriam Webster assure us.

“It probably comes from the Latin phrase “legem pone,” found in Psalm 119 of the Bible,” according to a social media post by the dictionary publisher.

The Latin itself translates roughly to “lay down the law” and is the beginning of a Bible verse that by the 16^th century was associated with an Anglican day on which payments and debts came due, according to etymonline.com.

By the 1820s, the Latin phrase morphed into “pony up” as a synonym for settling payments.

And although “pony up” has nothing to do with horses, another transactional expression does. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” comes from the practice of checking a horse’s teeth to determine how old it is, as explained in a post at the Rutgers Equine Science Center.

Of course, scrutinizing the age of a horse that was given to you would be akin to looking for the price tag on a birthday gift or a holiday present: It’s rude.

The more polite response would be to just say thank you. And then ride off into the sunset.

Joel Dresang is vice president-communications at Landaas & Company, LLC.

For What It’s Worth is an occasional look at the meanings and origins of words and expressions investors may encounter.